In President Donald Trump’s first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 2017, he casually threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. That wasn’t exactly an outlier. All his addresses to the General Assembly during that first term were crude, and at times shocking, pieces of “America First” oratory.
But the speech Trump delivered Tuesday was more “Trump First” than “America First.”
Even more so than usual, Trump was bogged down by constant frivolous tangents and a fixation on trumpeting, often deceptively, what he counts as his accomplishments. And given that the backdrop of Trump’s speech is his all-out assault on democracy in his own country, his lecturing world leaders on how to run a great nation was shocking in its audacity.
Trump praised his own record constantly in what at times resembled more of a State of the Union speech than a U.N. speech. More significantly, he worked to undermine the credibility of the U.N. as an institution for peacekeeping and global governance.
This is a preview of Zeeshan Aleem's latest column. Read the full column here.
